Girls are football champions

I went on holiday to Cornwall and we were staying on the beach. It was lovely and there were lots of other children to play with on the beach and in the park in front of the hotel. Ben and I were playing on the playground one afternoon when we met Maggie, Em and Flo.

It all began when Ben and I were on the swings when an older girl, red in the face, came speeding towards us. "Take this!" she shouted, as she threw the ball at me and kept running. "Go Maggie Go!" another girl shouted as she hurtled towards us, running right on and into the trees. As we looked ahead we could see four boys running after her. "Come back with the ball now!" one of them screamed. They stopped when they got to the playground. "Where are they?" a blonde boy in red shouted. "Give me back my ball!" demanded the other, as he grabbed the ball from my hands.

"This would never have happened if you just let us play," another girl had joined the group now. "She's going to keep taking the ball if you don't let us play!" It was no use though, the boys just ignored her, turned around and walked off.

"Never!" the boy in red turned around. "I will never let you play on my team," he said. "Girls just can't play football, it's a fact!"

"And here's a fact for you: we're just too good to play on your team!" the girl shouted back.

"I'm Em," she said holding out her hand, "and those silly boys are Michael, Sam, Danny and Jack. Do you like football?"

"You bet!" I said "and I have a football in my room so let's play without them." And that's how the football team began. Maggie, Em and Flo are sisters and so much fun. We played together every day and Ben played with us too, or shouted nice things from the sideline as we played. "I think it's time we showed that lot just how good we are," Maggie said one day. The challenge was on. That afternoon we crossed the playground, to the other side of the park. The playground had become the "peace line" dividing the park into two football pitches, one for us, and one for the boys.

"So, you think we can't play?" Maggie said to Michael stretching her hand out "I would like to propose a truce," she said. "Let's play, and if we lose we have to promise to stay on our side of the park and never to nick your ball again. If we win however, you have to let girls play on your team." "We will consider it." Michael said. The boys huddled together whispering and hushing each other every time a voice was raised.

"Fine," Michael said, "heads or tails?" Soon after the game began. We were so good, passing the ball to each other, but the boys were just too fast. By half time they had already scored 2 goals but we kept up the fight in the second half, we were just determined to win...

"GOOOOOOAAAAAAL!" the boys screamed. 3 Nil.

"GOOAAAAAL!" they roared again, 4 nil, and with each goal, it felt more painful. We had no chance of winning. "Time's almost up," Michael shouted, "ha ha ha!" Michael kept running, looking back at us away from the goal. "We are the champions!"

"What are we going to do?" Em looked worriedly at us.

"We are going to lose gracefully and show them who the real champions are," Maggie said. "Just because we lose it doesn't mean we aren't great. We are the magnificent Sea Stars after all. Let's show them how good we are," Maggie said. So with her words in our heads pushing us on, we played the last 20 minutes and just in the last few minutes Maggie scored the best goal of the match.

"So, you have won," Maggie said to Michael after the boys triumphant winning cheers stopped, "we will leave you in peace."

"Well, the thing is Maggie," Danny said "we think you are all actually pretty good and we'd be stupid if we didn't let you play on our team."

"We'll join you," I said "but if we're playing for you, you've got to take our name."